Cooling Fire.
by Redaura
Summary: When life gets to much, a crystal full of dreams can calm the mind, even if it's just for a little while. R/R! please.


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Cooling Fire.

The night was so dark outside. The black clouds boiled and rumbled, like gleeful thugs, delighting in the pain they caused as the thunder accompanied the lighting forks that slashed and twanged across the sky.

As the rain started, wrenching the humid air, it drove it's self into the ground so hard it bounced back up. It could have been trying to beat the earth into submission, or trying to rebound back to the sky, recalling a dim memory of pale, blurry skies and just grey tainted clouds. 

The rain could have been hiding what happened on Earth. All the atrocities that people and life commit.

I felt the pain well up inside of me, blinding me to the wonders of nature. Screaming inside, where no one can see, where no one can be bothered to see where no one bothers to see. Only inside me that happens, or so it seems. I slammed the window shut on the storm and stalked like the offend student I was back to bed. 

I had exams tomorrow, and I did want to do well. I really did. I just didn't understand why it was so... so... so _set_. Like a life plan, just drawn out by some person in a suit, like programming a computer.

It really riled me up the wrong way. I didn't understand the need to order everything so there was nothing left. I resented the control they tried to have over me. 

This misunderstanding, the refusal to co-operate and a failure to want what they had planned for us left me completely on my own. At least on my own I could dream with out interference. That thought cheered me up.

I sprang out of my bed, suddenly energised, realising what I was missing the storm and ran out side screaming what I was feeling into the water pouring into my mouth and eyes. I could see the beauty of the storm as the elements battled it out in the raging winds of above.

I spent hours out there till I was left alone, with the softer rain, feeling calmer for once. I wandered, slowly back to my room, trying to keep he feeling I had. In the shower I smiled at to the hot, scalding water that ran down my body, warming its path. 

"I wish the Goblin King would come and take me away!" I laughed at my obsession, ignoring the little disappointment that no David Bowie look alike came on owls' wings to me. I dried my now energised body, clambered into an old tee shirt and tried to sleep.

I giggled into my sheets, alone and cried, "I wish... I _wish_," putting all my energy, all my passion, everything I had into it, "that the Goblin King would come and take me away _right now_!" 

In the sudden silence, made louder at the thunder punctuating my words I could hear my words rebounding around the room, echoing in the tiny space.

"Really." A sceptical voice asked. I would recognise that voice anywhere, like any Labyrinth worshiper would. 

The crystal rolled and twirled on his dangerous fingers. It was it's own magic dance of creation. I knew this, yet could not word it. 

"What is it?" My voice trembled, quaking on the now dark, still air.

"It is a crystal. Nothing more." The whirling of the orb seems more violent; sharper as it weaves distorted figurines of eight, lead by his finger tips, supported by his palms. "But if you turn it this way, it can show you you're dreams."

I looked at the mesmerising movement of the crystal, following it's icy fire with my eyes and head, cat like, perhaps. "What if I want to _have_ my dreams?" the crystals pace never ceased. It spun and rolled faster and faster. I thought I had stumped him, he was silent for so long, but when I dragged my reluctant eyes off the little moon that orbited his gloves they where rewarded with another beautiful, mystical sight to see.

He was smiling and in that smile there was laughter, the sexy purr of his voice, the huskiness and cruelty of his nature and the knowledge that he was being generous. "But that's what dreams are. What you can not have." His voice was so damn condescending, yet he could be forgiven.

"No, dreams are to give you something to aim for, something to _feel_ and something to achieve. A purpose in life, if you will."

He chuckled, driving shivers down my spine, trying to disgrace my answer. Cruel, seductive man. "Did you dream of this?" He gestured around the room, making the crystal fly, and it came to rest on his steepled, graceful fingers. 

I looked around at what he meant. The grubby room I slept and ate in, worked and cried in. The peeling, damp wallpaper with diabolic, faded flowers. The perpetual reminder that no one wanted me. 

"No, this is not a dream. This is _life_."

The crystal was moving again, as if life and reality that dictated it could not exist could never hope to hold it captive to law and order. "Do you like it?"

"This room? No."

"Do you want to continue to live here?"

I shook my head.

"Then why do you deny yourself."

I tried to clear my head of it's Goblin King induced haze. "I watched the movie. It's really what I fear most. And okay, I _dream_ about doing things I fear but I do _not_ want a snake thank-you-very-much, plastic or not."

He flung his head back and laughed. The silver moonlight highlighting his hair into further illumination, it gleamed along his fine features and drew attention to his eyes. His chest pumped against his leather eighties jacket. It wasn't out dated, on him it was supreme. Time is, after all, what you make it.

"Then why did you summon me?" there was a glimmer of anger there, just lurking under the merry blue waves, meant to be seen. Meant to frighten.

"To see if you where real, even if I knew you could not possibly be real."

"Can I not?" a quirk of his eyebrows, a cruel twist of his lips. "But then you still believe and _you_," he almost spat the last words out, moving closer to me, rigid body stance as he pointed, "wished your self away."

"True. But I've done that before. Why come now? And why let Sarah..."

"_Sarah_," he injected, "never happened." 

I raised my eyebrows in silent question. "That _video_," contempt again for on of the greatest movies ever, "is a whole load of crap." But he must have watched the movie more than once to rip it off so well. "Oh," I said, pretending relief in the face of an angry Goblin King, "you don't do plastic snakes."

"No, I do real ones." I looked at him in alarm. He grinned a predatory grin. 

"So _is_ the Labyrinth a reflection or image of here?"

"Here?" he almost mimicked, "is what happens when you kill magic."

I thought of the pain, the death, all the misery and hurt that is caused by fun, or just sheer carelessness and stupidity. There was nothing to compensate it, it just was. Not enough magic in people's souls to hold back the dark, crushing mass of life. "So is there more than a magical image of here there?"

"So much more." He promised with a lazy smile. I thought of blue velvet skies with serene moons and a landscape, oh what a landscape... The crystal was cool in my hands, compared to the fire of life, but it was a brief sanctuary, a brief place of rest and healing with beautiful, swirling colours that can be tasted, before the horrors of life suck you in. 

But it is there, when you need it, just like the Labyrinth and its King are real. Just like my place there is real.

AN: Would you look at that! Italics, wow. *proud* Anyways, did you like the content? The important bit? Or did you not, either way, please review! It would make my day! 

Disclaimer: I do not own the Labyrinth, Jareth or the quotes. The 'I' can be however you want it to be! :) 


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